The train would leave Sheffield at 10 o’clock, which gave me too little time to rescue Sarah. But I had to try. At sunset, I moved as mist outside the car then went to the front of the train, taking shape in the motor room, just behind the engineer. I disposed of him quickly, drinking nearly all of his blood. I was not particularly hungry but such an opportunity should not be wasted. At the end, to be careful, I broke his neck then stayed where I was, waiting for the rest of the… the crew I think they are called, to come and join him.
The second man reeked of sweat and soot, the third much the same; these I killed quickly and in a violent human manner. Then, just to be certain the train would not leave with a different crew, I ripped through the wires of the engine. At the last, I dragged one of the bodies away from the front of the train, toward the passenger compartments further back. We would stay where we were, at least until the passengers had been questioned. Plenty of time, I thought, as I made my way partly by instinct, partly by the help of strangers to the center of town and the police station. As I had hoped, the bodies had been found and there was only one old man guarding Sarah and a male prisoner in a separate locked room. I had already decided to take the moderate approach to this problem—which is to say the human one—if only because a dead guard and an escaped prisoner would bring a great deal of trouble on Sarah Justin, and through her, onto me.
Besides, I wasn’t hungry any more. In your land a vampire could grow fat.
The guard didn’t even glance up at me as I walked into the room, though I made enough noise to alert him to my approach. He waited until I stood before his desk then looked up from the book he’d been reading. “Office is closed,” he said.
“Closed?”
“You can’t get legal work done, I mean.”
“I think I can,” I said and laid a gold ring in front of him.
“What’s that?” he asked, making me wonder how he saw to read.
“Gold,” I said. “Nearly pure. And if you pick up the piece you will notice four tiny diamonds along one side. Worth more than Mrs. Baxter’s fine, I would think.”
“We’re not in the business of taking goods for fines, and she hasn’t even seen a magistrate yet. It will have to wait until Whitby.”
Not certain if I had found an honest man, or only a greedy one, I laid a second, larger ring beside the first. “I don’t care if these pay the fine or not,” I said. “I want her released.”
“I can’t do that, sir,” he said, though he leaned forward to examine the pieces. As I took in breath to try one final, persuasive argument, I caught a scent that likely saved his life—alcohol, some cheap grain, recently consumed from the strength of it. If I had been more fixed on him than on my reason for being there, I would have noticed it sooner.
“I can’t,” he repeated, looking up from the rings and directly into my eyes.
“Give me the keys,” I said after a moment.
He handed them over, but fought my suggestion that he sleep. A well-aimed blow to the side of his head placed him in a state close enough to sleep to seem so to the first returning policeman. Just to be on the safe side, I found the bottle in his pocket and spilled it across his desk. The rings were in plain sight. When the others returned, they would think he had been too drunk to hide his bribe.
In the back, I tried the key in the lock of the room where they had put her, but though it fit, it did not open the door. Apparently, the drunk was not trusted with an actual set of keys. I wonder if he knew it.
With no choice left me, I called to Sarah—awake now and wary. I told her to step back then flung myself at the door. It burst inward with such a crash that my first sight of her was with her face contorted with fear, eyes shut tight, hands covering her ears. “I thought you blew it up,” she said.
“No need. It is not so thick,” I replied, though my arms and shoulders ached with an almost human sharpness. “Now we need to catch the train.”
“It would have left by now with your… boxes.” She wanted to ask about the earth, but my only answer would be the one she gave the authorities.
“There’s been trouble at the station. The train is still there. We must go.”
She barely glanced at the unconscious guard as we passed him. Apparently my ruse fooled even her.
The station was filled with police. We waited in the shadows near the depot for the questioning to end. Two men passed close by, speaking of the murders. Sarah became pale as one of my brides, but I swore on the Bible and my mother’s grave that I knew nothing of them. My soul is already damned, of course, and my mother, being a deceitful woman in life, would hardly be bothered by my lie.
We saw her friends. She started to call to them but I told her to be silent. “You must not be seen with them because they might be thought—” I hesitated, uncertain of the word.
“Accomplices,” she supplied and nodded her agreement. So we sat, speaking little until the police went away and the train was fitted with a new engine. At the moment the wheels began to turn and the train pulled forward, blocking the view from the station, I pushed her toward an entrance. No coward she, she grabbed the handrail and pulled herself up. I followed with far less difficulty and soon we were sitting in the stateroom I had presumably rented for us… the first time we were together in it since the journey had begun. We had, I understood with some concern, less than two hours until sunrise and would arrive in London in midday rather than after dark. Like it or not, I was at her mercy. I had no choice but to explain matters as truthfully as I dared. To my surprise, I found that I did not wish to cause her anguish or take control of her mind, and not just because I needed her services.
She sat across from me in the little compartment, staring at the door every time someone went by as if the horror she would face lay outside our little compartment rather than on the seat across from her. Her hands clutched each other and the folds of her skirt, no doubt to keep me from seeing how they trembled. I reached for one. I had touched her before, but never for so long. I let my guard fall slowly, watching her face for some sign of understanding.
“Your hands are so cold,” she finally said.
My usual means to approach the matter. “There is a reason for that,” I said, and told her.
She listened to my story, more incredulous than horrified. A smile danced across her lips as if she wanted to laugh. “You are taking my mind off my troubles with this outrageous tale. You could make a fine living here as a penny dreadful writer,” she said when I had finished.
I could have pressed her hand to my silent heart but that would have been too intimate, too… well, I would not. With only an hour remaining, I made her swear not to scream. And I changed.
I chose wolf form. A large and dangerous animal, it is true, but it has been my experience that women are far more afraid of bats,
Dear Sarah! When I lay across the seat opposite her in the form of noble beast, my muzzle resting on my paws so I would look as tame as possible, her hands shook but she reached out and brushed them across my fur, then buried her face in the back of my neck. “How wonderful!” she cried. “How completely wonderful!”
Such a woman, Sarah Justin! She watched with interest, not fear, as I shifted first to mist then to my own form. “And to think I have traveled with you all this time and never once suspected!” she said as much to herself as to me.
Now that she believed my story, I went on to explain that any exposure to sun would burn me as painfully as flames would her.
She understood and said she would see my last two boxes safely to Carfax. I told her she need not do this but she insisted. “I think of the men on the train with their axes and all you have done for me. Of course I will see you safely to your new home. The train stops in Purfleet. I will arrange for cart and driver then catch a later train to London. I’ll have more than enough time to make it seem that I never left home at all.”
Then she sat, hands in her lap again, watching me with a curious expression. Was it hope? She seemed to like the wolf and I enjoyed the feel of her hands on my pelt. But such a form is dangerous. I lose some human control and to have her touch me as she would not dare were I in human form… no, it was better to stay as I was and follow her conventions.
To pass time, I asked, “Tell me what you know of London.”
She spoke of theaters and pubs and the banking district and the rest. I absorbed it all—particularly the places in your East End where one such as me can feed without arousing suspicion. Thanks to her, I feel almost at home in this marvelous city, and the hunting is excellent.
I left her just before sunrise, aware of her gaze following me. She had not given me her address. I had not
